Finger Friendly

[RacingDog]

Ok, now I know I'm just a grumpy old reprobate but.....

I've noticed a trend for Windows Mobile apps to try to emulate the finger touch appearance of other products.

Hmmm.

Let's consider the commonest of these, the simple list box. These are now appearing, not as a list of text items, but as a list of pseudo buttons, each several lines high. Ok, think about this for a moment. Each item, in an already restricted screen space now takes around 4 lines worth of space. So....

1) You can only see a quarter of the information you used to be able to see.
2) You have to do four times as much work to scroll down the list. In the pathalogical case, a list that would have been entirely visible now requires scrolling, around four screens worth.

And all this extra work is called finger friendly?

Sheesh! heaven preserve us from bright ideas!

[agraham]

<Rant>
I tend to agree. The information density on some of the screens you see on phones nowadays is appallingly low. I actually prefer something that looks like a little computer, and needs a stylus, rather than the superficial eye-candy which I find garish and distracting. But then I am an old fashioned pedantic pensioner who people don't expect to understand "computers", ignoring the fact that it was my generation that pioneered their use. Give me an ADM3A anyday (Google it!)
</Rant>

Crawls back under stone.

[specci48]

I think the main problem is that some people expect too much and want everything in one solution at the same time. E.g. they want a portable device with the size of a matchbox but like to read newspapers whith it and bother that they can't see anything. Or the other way round they want a big pad to see all infomation at one time but rail about the fact that they can't put it in their trouser pocket.
Every solution here must be a compromise between different expectations. And it's no surprise that different people like different solutions.

I see the kids today writing a sms or navigating through the phone as fast as I would never could. So I'm sure they define "finger friendly" erverything that you can do with your thumb...


specci48

[RacingDog]

Re ADM3A - oh yeah I remember those, although at that time I mainly used DEC VT-52's, being the default for the good old PDP-11, which was the main workhorse of the real time end of the buisness. And do you remember? How lucky we felt not to be getting paper tape burns and cuts anymore, or having to re-sort dropped decks of punched cards!

Re kid's failings to understand that we invented computers......

1) I spent most of my last 5 years at work sorting out the messes made by allegedly bright youngsters

2) I once implemented a debugger on a PDP-11 which had to work via the switches and indicators of the printer's colour scanner it was embedded in. It took a gnats under 512 bytes. I'd really like to see them try!

[Standa]

I absolutelly agree with your analyse of "finger friendly". But we cannot do anything. Young people (new users) changed finger friendly for usability. They think everything "fingerfriendled" is usable and comfortable. They don't care stylus is fast and precise way to use touch device and best is combination of both (stylus and finger friendly). There is just one rule: stylus is old and unfashionable, finger is only way, and no more deeper thinking :-D
But I understand to "light" users: they use only sms, calendar, pictures and music, a lot of them don't need more and finger is enough for them.

[dlfallen]

I think the main problem is that some people expect too much and want everything in one solution at the same time. E.g. they want a portable device with the size of a matchbox but like to read newspapers whith it and bother that they can't see anything. Or the other way round they want a big pad to see all infomation at one time but rail about the fact that they can't put it in their trouser pocket.

I disagree in one aspect. Yes, many want both portability and large size which are not available with current technology. But I do not think they expect too much. Much progress is made because people want more than what is currently available.

I don't see this as a problem, but rather as an opportunity. For several years I have had a dream of a computer I could wear as a ring. This computer accepts verbal input and generates a display in front of me at any resolution and size I prefer. Waving the ring over any media allows it to read the stored information. I could go on and on about the dream, but you get the general idea.

Sounds fantastic, but remember that a lot of technological Science Fiction of the early to mid 1900's is now reality. Back in 1955, if you told people that in the future you would have a combination mobile telephone and powerful computer small enough to stick in your shirt pocket, you would have been considered a loony. It doesn't seem to me that a "ring computer" that projects a screen in front of you is all that far-fetched.

Or should I be writing Si-Fi?

-Dave Fallen

[RacingDog]

Know what you mean Dave. I remember in the early 60s reading a kids SF tale in which the lad had a computer in an earpiece he spoke to and which whispered answers back. We could more or less do that now couldn't we?